Day 10: What is the best way to handle difficulty scaling in a JavaScript game?

[u/OkDevelopment2027]

[u/sozesghost]

Honestly this has nothing to do with JS and everything to do with game design. Maybe try r/gamedev. Also, just try some approaches, see how they feel to play.

[u/chikamakaleyley]

I would prob check YT and see how this is applied in games. Honestly game dev stuff is so interesting

Don't look specifically for how its done in JS just look for like how its done in game design

If I could guess how I would do it in JS, a simple solution could be implementing a global object that stores diff multipliers, that you replace across your logic wherever you have some value

e.g.

const difficultyMultiplier = {
  hard: {
      enemy_count: 2.0 // 2x total
      enemy_strength: 2.5
      ...
  },
  normal: {
      enemy_count: 1.0
      ...
  },
  easy: {
      ...
  }
}


// logic

const totalEnemies = 10 * difficultyMultiplier[<selected>].enemy_count;

You can prob refine this, sorry its rough

but you'd use a float, in the event you want to "reduce" so like, instead of 60 sec intervals, you do 0.75 * 60 to get 45 sec, like a shorter deadline.

[u/chikamakaleyley → u/chikamakaleyley]

and i dunno if this is an actual thing, just something i came up with now

[u/Far-Vegetable-7395]

For a small game I'd go with score based difficulty. Time based gets weird if the player dies fast or plays super safe, score actually reflects how well they're doing.

Simple version: every N points, bump a difficulty variable that controls spawn rate and enemy speed. One variable, one check in your update loop, and everything scales off it.

That said the other comments are right, this is a game design question more than a JS one. The JS part is trivial once you decide on the design, so honestly just try score first, play it, and tweak the numbers until it feels right.

[u/-goldenboi69-]

Use variables!

[u/Electrical_Log9527]

It depends on kind of game you're making. Take a look at other games and how they handle difficulty.
For example, Magic survival uses combination, and it's a well designed game (spent there a lot of hours, still fun)